What I think about when I read...

Where do we encounter spiritual and ethical questions in our everyday life?

While on a retreat this winter, I reflected on the idea of spiritual and ethical questions that find their way into our everyday life. As I was on the Baptist Women in Ministry of Georgia retreat, there was a beautiful, spiritual presence throughout the weekend. However, it did make me aware of the question why. Why are retreats necessary if spirituality can be found in our everyday lives? When looking at the time I spent surrounded by other amazing women, I realized that retreats are not meant to just heighten a sense of spirituality. If they are done well, retreats are meant to remind us that it CAN be found in our everyday lives. There is nothing that happens on a retreat that I cannot do on a regular basis. Therefore, why not?
           Sometimes we just need a reminder of the importance of seeing our spirituality in everything we do. For me, faith is absolutely a practice—any practice requires practice, redundant or not. Therefore, why should we think faith and spirituality are things that we do not need to encounter every day? When I am reminded of this, I find myself seeing my spirituality in literally everything—my reading, other people, and the trees. Even the birds have something to say about spirituality. Retreats should not be mountain top experiences. Instead, they should prepare us to find spirituality in our everyday lives.

This idea reminded me of reading. For me, reading is absolutely a spiritual experience, regardless of the topic. The reader is becoming in tune with a part of them that is not always released. Their personal encounter with the book is shaping them intellectually or at times ethically. This is a form of spirituality. The reader is having an encounter that transforms who they are, a key to any spiritual event. As I mentioned in my previous journal entry, each book is like a part of our DNA. This DNA helps us to make decisions and live our lives. The same is true for spirituality.

When it comes to ethical questions, I feel as if they are always a part of my day to day experience. I tend to question the ethics of every choice that I make. Maybe this is because I had the teachings of logic drilled into me at an early age, along with logical fallacies. Either way, I try to think of ethical agendas before making any decision. This becomes drastically difficult whenever personal ethics conflict with the ethics of others. Following the idea of personal, non-communal ethics being based on personal values, this becomes even harder when two personal values seem to conflict with one another. What happens when two parts of yourself are at odds with one another? Which do you choose? An example of this is loyalty vs. honesty. If those are both values you hold dear to you, what happens when your honesty leads to not being loyal to a close friend? These situations seem to happen pretty regularly. For me, this is where personal ethics become a gray area-- the reason that life cannot be judged in black and white.

In my creative writing course, we had to write a bad story. As I read my way through the worst pieces of literature I have ever seen, I realized something. What was missing from these stories? Yes, they are all missing any form of logic or any meaning, but there was something more. They are all missing emotion. Emotion is vital to creating a relationship between the character and the reader. The character has to be vulnerable for the audience to feel a connection. Therefore, why would we expect something else in relationships between us and other people? Each of us has a “story” about every friendship, every family member, and every person in our life. When we look through those stories, are any of them bad? By “bad,” I don’t mean ended poorly—a relationship that ended in a devastating way had an impact on our lives. As much as you love someone is as much as you can be hurt. However, in hurt is where we find growth. So if that’s not the case, what makes a relationship “bad,” or not fully developed? Maybe we laid framework and then left them to build siding on their own. No matter how great a frame is, it’s only an outline. We need to build onto that frame to create something. No two pieces of wood will out stand harsh weather; however, a roof will do the job. Why then would be settle for a frame? Maybe it’s because it’s hard to get hurt that way. At the same time, we cannot expect to have relationships full of love if we leave them with just the basics. This question to me is directly related to ethics. 

Is it ethical to not put everything we have into the things we begin? Is it ethical to start something with no intention on finishing it? It reminds me of campaign speech promises; when you are running for office, would you promise to do something that you knew was impossible? Are we not doing the same thing when we start forming relationships that we know we cannot put effort into? If the difference is only in it being a relationship instead of a new vending machine or new legislation, should it not be more important ethically? There are questions that I think we should all look into. Who are we to the world if not the actions we are a part of and the relationships we have? Where is the integrity in that if we are not putting our best foot forward?